Still Breathing
by Rhino7
Summary: My first FMA fic. Oneshot. How could there be gentle words to tell a mother that her reason for breathing was no longer breathing? alter!Trisha visits her sons' graves. End of series and movie spoilers. Kind reviews welcome!


**Still Breathing**

**By Rhino7**

**Disclaimer: This is what happens when you listen to Kelly Clarkson's Sober for an hour after watching Conqueror of Shamballa. This is my first FMA fic and I'm not satisfied with how it came out, but (shrugs) oh well. I don't own FMA or anything, but I do own this little ficlet. Kind reviews welcome!**

**..:--X--:..**

The children weren't supposed to leave the world first. It was just a rule, a law, some sort of promise. But like every rule, law, and promise, there were loopholes. It was always tragic to hear of a child dying of a disease or in an accident, but murder? As far as she was concerned, both of her sons had been murdered.

Trisha Heiderich knelt down and gently moved the withered flowers aside and replaced them with fresh, colorful ones. There was no one else in the cemetery. A gentle breeze moved her dark hair against her face. The leaves were beginning to change their colors from the bright, lively green to dark reds and dying browns.

It had been three months since her youngest son, Alfons, had been killed. The details and events surrounding his death were being kept quiet and hidden. He had been murdered, shot from behind, she knew that. Someone had pulled the trigger and shot her child. Trisha clenched her fists as the headstone slurred in her vision.

Her older son, Edward, had died in a zeppelin crash, an accident. She turned and let her gaze settle on the second headstone, just a few feet from the first. Being killed by a machine of war could never be called an accident. He had been murdered as well. There wasn't even anything left of the body to bury. They'd buried an empty casket.

Edward had always been the strong one, always stubborn, defiant, and cynical. Alfons was more sensitive, quiet, and full of compassion. They were her children…They were her babies, damn it all! And someone had stolen them away.

When news had come of Edward's death, she'd hit her knees. She was just pulling herself to her feet when Alfons was killed. She'd fallen completely then and she had yet to rise. It was just too painful. One day she had two wonderful, beautiful children. The next, some bastard took them, leaving her to bleed all alone.

Trisha bent forward and sat on her knees. She couldn't even remember the last thing she'd said to either of them. Edward had gone in search of his father, who'd been missing since the end of the war. She hadn't approved, and they'd separated on less than happy terms. Shortly after his brother's death, Alfons moved into an apartment and started working in that rocket factory. It had only taken one cough for her to realize what the job was doing to him. He hadn't listened.

Maybe…maybe if she'd worked harder to keep them at home, or at least tried to reconcile with Edward, or not been so closed on the idea of working in a factory…Maybe they would still be alive. She blamed herself, she blamed the war, she blamed the world, and she blamed God. She'd only been given 18 years to be a mother before it was all ripped away.

Tears welled in her eyes and broke free, rushing down her cheeks and dropping onto the flowers that she'd placed on Alfons's grave. It hurt…still…so badly. Wasn't the pain supposed to ease after so long? Yet it still felt as though the phone call had just come, the phone call telling her what had happened to her Alfons. She could still hear the voice on the line, struggling to find gentle words to break the news.

Gentle words? How could there be gentle words to tell a mother that her reason for breathing was no longer breathing? Trisha gripped two fistfuls of grass and touched her forehead to the cold granite of the headstone.

There had been no escape from the truth. She had been forced to stand composed twice while men lowered her sons into the ground and buried them. She had no composure left after she saw…them.

It was almost cruel, how much the two boys at Alfons's funeral had looked like her sons. Their names were even Edward and Alphonse, and they were brothers. It was almost like her sons had come to their own funeral. Her astonishment was present in their eyes. They looked like they'd seen a ghost, just as she had. She found out later that they had lost their mother, like she had lost her sons.

Trisha pulled herself together, as close as together as she could be nowadays, and stood up, brushing the lingering tears from her eyes and sniffling. Someone walked up behind her and stopped.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't know anyone else was out here." The figure said.

Trisha drew a deep breath and turned, "It's all right, Noa. How are you?"

The Roma girl dropped her gaze, "All right. Are you doing any better?"

Trisha sighed and looked back at the graves, "Not really. I don't think I'll ever be better." She looked at the words 'Alfons Heiderich' carved into the granite with one last, long, loving look, before turning and walking away.

"You don't have to leave. You could stay a while longer, with me." Noa stammered.

Trisha shook her head slowly, fighting back another rush of tears, "I can, but I shouldn't. Goodbye, Noa."

"Goodbye, Mrs. Heiderich."

"Please, call me Trisha."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Goodbye, Trisha."

Trisha smiled through a grimace and walked away from the cemetery. The wounds were still too fresh to consider herself to be healing.

It was just wrong. It wasn't right. A mother wasn't supposed to bring her children into the world, only to live to see them snatched out of it. And there was no way to ease the pain. The sun would never shine as brightly again, nor would the moon ever glow as brilliantly. All she could do was get up every morning and keep breathing and try to live out the day.

She felt so pathetic; the only real solace she could find was being around the Elric brothers, who were alive, healthy, and relatively happy. The only way to suckle her suffering was to play mother to the two boys who so closely resembled her sons, but were not her sons.

All she could do was keep breathing, nothing more.

The children just weren't supposed to leave the world first, but hers did.


End file.
